If you run the same program again and again (a monthly new-hire class, a bootcamp that restarts every term, the same training for several departments), build it once as a template and run each group as a cohort of it. The content lives on the template and every cohort reads it live. Each cohort keeps its own players, guilds and progress.
Templates
A template is an ordinary Adventure whose Adventure Type is set to Template in the General section of Adventure Settings. Only platform admins see that field. You build milestones, challenges, achievements, items and Tabis on the template exactly as you would anywhere else. Players can't join a template directly (its enrollment link turns them away); they join one of its cohorts.
Starting a Cohort
On My Adventures, choose From a Template to open the Template Library. Each card shows who built the template, how many milestones, achievements, items and chapters it holds, and how many Adventures already use it. Press Use this template and a new cohort is created, named after the template with [new child] on the end, with you as its owner; continue from the confirmation to its Journey. The cohort has its own name and dates: an admin, or a GM of the cohort, changes them from Edit on Manage Adventures.
The Template Library is always available to admins. Everyone else sees it when the platform allows creating Adventures from a template.
What the Template Shares, Live
A cohort doesn't get a copy of the content. It reads the template's, so there is only ever one version:
- milestones and their steps, challenges and their questions
- achievements, including the rank ladder
- items, Tabis and the layout of the Journey map
- posts and resources
- skills, encounters, consequences, profile tests and branch groups
- the feature switches, quick links and images in Adventure Settings
Editing the template changes every running cohort immediately. Fix a typo, add a milestone or rebalance a reward on the template and every cohort has the change on its next page load. That's the point of the model, and also the thing to be careful with: there is no "only for new cohorts" edit. Make content changes on the template itself, not from inside a cohort.
What Each Cohort Keeps for Itself
- Its players and their roles.
- All progress: XP, BLOO, completions, submissions, challenge attempts, purchases, achievements held and Blooms. A milestone completed in one cohort credits that cohort only.
- Guilds and their members.
- Garden missions and tasks (see below).
- Item stock: an item with a stock of 2 sells two in each cohort.
Three things start from the template and can be set per cohort:
- Cooper Context is copied into the cohort when it's created. After that each cohort has its own, so update it in the cohort's Adventure Settings.
- Cooper's Character follows the template unless the cohort sets its own.
- The Claude API key follows the template unless the cohort saves its own (see below).
Missions and Tasks Come Along Automatically
A new cohort starts with copies of the template's Garden missions and tasks. For a cohort created before that happened, or after you've added more to the template, open Admin Tools → Missions & Tasks inside the cohort. It lists the template's missions and tasks with their state in this cohort (Here, Not copied yet or Trigger missing) and one button per kind: Copy the N missing, or Restore the triggers for tasks that arrived without the milestone that completes them. It's safe to run again; nothing already in the cohort is copied twice.
A mission aimed at a guild arrives as a draft, because the template's guild means nothing in the cohort. It needs an audience from the cohort before it goes live.
Guilds
Guilds aren't copied into a new cohort, because they're about the people in it. Two ways to set them up:
- Import players with a Guild column into the cohort (Manage Players → Add Players). Each guild named in the file is created in the cohort as it goes.
- Copy them with the Duplicator. Open it on the template, tick the guilds (and any missions aimed at them), choose the cohort under Duplicate into, and confirm. Copied guilds arrive empty, with no members, no XP and a new join code. A mission aimed at a guild copied in the same run is re-pointed at the copy; one left with no audience arrives as a draft rather than going out to everyone.
QR Codes and Magic Links
Achievements live on the template, but their QR codes and magic links are made per cohort, so a printed code credits the cohort it was made for. To get a cohort's QR code, open the achievement from inside that cohort; the editor tells you which Adventure the code redeems into. Milestone QR codes carry the cohort too. A typed magic code works in every cohort and credits whichever Adventure the player redeems it in. See QR Codes — Live & Hybrid Event Checkpoints.
The A.I. Key
Save your Claude API key once, on the template's A.I. tab, and every cohort uses it. A cohort's A.I. tab says when it's using the template's key; save a key there only if that cohort should use a different one. Test Key makes one real call and tells you whose key answered. Cooper uses the same key when an Adventure has one, so its conversations in every cohort are billed to it too. See Setting Up AI Grading & Gift Card Rewards.
Running a Cohort Day to Day
Inside a cohort, the Admin Tools menu is deliberately short, because everything in it is about this cohort's people: Players, Achievements, Manage Players, Player Records, Missions & Tasks and the Player Meta Manager. Template Settings, in the Adventure Navigation section, opens the template's Adventure Settings.
An Independent Copy Instead
If you want a copy that doesn't follow the template, say a one-off variant you're going to change heavily, use Duplicate on Manage Adventures. You get a full, independent Adventure with its own milestones, achievements, items, guilds and Tabis, every reference between them remapped, and no player data. Editing the copy never touches the original, and editing the original never touches the copy. Duplicate the template itself rather than one of its cohorts: a cohort's content lives on the template, so a copy made from the cohort would come out without it.
Which to Use
- A template and cohorts for anything that repeats with the same content: one place to improve it, and every group benefits at once.
- Duplicate when the new Adventure is going to go its own way and shouldn't change when the original does.